Human Rights in Crises

Abstract

The Nigerian nation has gone through a countless number of socio-economic and political challenges since its spontaneous union of numerous ethno-religious, political, and geo-regional races on January 1, 1914. There have been joint threats to the cohesion, assimilation, and unity of the Nigerian State due to the prevalence of a tense political system that is deeply ingrained with a deeply divided society. These threats include symptoms of not only disaffection but also an escalation of insecurities such as conflicts over resource allocation and revenue control, cattle rustling, kidnapping, cultism, armed banditry, the politics of inter-ethnic conflict. This paper adopted the doctrinal and historiographical methods of research to appraise the subject of the research. The paper concluded that while it has been established in this paper that self-determination is indeed provided for in both the Universal declaration of Human Rights, 1948 (udhr) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, 1986 (achpr), it has also been established to be against the Constitution of Nigeria, which is founded on the incontrovertible principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. The paper further recommended that consensual regionalism is the way forward for satisfying dissenting voices, and guaranteeing adequate representation in government.